Chapter 19

"Well, thanks again for everything, Shelly," Josh Archer said from the rolled-down window of his pickup truck. "You've been a big help. I don't know how we could have done everything without you."

"Sure you don't want to spend the night?" the tall, dark-haired thirtysomething woman asked.

"It'd be tempting, but it's a long drive, and we want to get some miles on today," Josh replied, starting the engine.

"If you want to do it again next year, feel free to give me a call," Shelly told him. "It's been a real adventure for me. And, thanks for coming to visit the kids."

"Hey, we enjoyed it too," Josh smiled. He waved his hand to the cluster of elementary school kids clustered around the truck, and raised his voice a little, "'Bye, kids," he called to them.

"Goodbye," Tiffany chimed in from next to him.

"Be careful," Shelly said, then added, "Watch out for moose."

"Sure will," Josh said. "See you next time." He let up on the clutch, and waved again. The heavily loaded old pickup with the "Run-8 Kennels" logo on the side began to move out of the parking lot of the Eagle River Elementary School.

"I sure am glad we found her," Tiffany said as Josh started to roll up the window. It wasn't a bad day, in fact, warmish, compared to what they'd gotten used to. Although it was overcast and the mountians off to the south disappeared into the overcase, in the distance they could see that it was clear out across the Knik Arm. There was beautiful country out that way, and they knew it. They'd been there. "It was a big thrill for those kids."

"It sure was," Josh smiled. It was a big deal in Alaska for a pair of Iditarod mushers to visit an elementary classroom; it didn't happen every day, even there. It was one more thing on a busy list that Josh and Tiffany had to do this day to get set to go home, but it was the last thing. They'd flown in from Nome with their dogs and gear the day before, but there had been a lot of sorting out and loading to do, people to thank, and arrangements to make.

It would have been a whole lot harder to organize everything without some local assistance, Josh and Tiffany knew, and Shelly had made a big difference ... The people at the Iditarod headquarters in Wasilla had been helpful, but there was a limit to what they could do. But, entirely out of the blue one day last summer after their official announcement of their plans to run the Iditarod in their home town newspaper, the Spearfish Lake Record-Herald, they'd received a letter from Shelly Goodlock, one of the only three Record-Herald subscribers in Alaska, offering assistance. They didn't find out until much later that Shelly had been in the same class as Josh's older brother, John, and had dated him once or twice, although Josh hadn't remembered her. The Spearfish Lake connection worked even in Alaska.

Shelly had handled a lot of arrangements for them, and had been a big help, especially on the Anchorage end of the race. She'd never asked for anything, and Josh and Tiffany had offered to visit her fourth graders in repayment of the favors done to them. They'd just finished doing a presentation for the whole school, but Shelly's class got dogsled rides around the school, as well.

"Let's stop and check the rig one last time before we get out on the highway," Tiffany suggested.

"Good idea," Josh agreed, spotting a store parking lot not far ahead that would work. The camper on the back of the pickup was so loaded with gear that they wouldn't be sleeping in it on the way home -- they'd barely managed to get the door closed. Behind the truck was a dog-box trailer with two sleds tied on top, and 36 dogs aboard. Twenty three of those dogs had gone all the way from Anchorage to Nome with them. There were a couple new dogs there that Josh and Tiffany had picked up earlier in the day from Joe Reddington; they'd traded and bought a dog from Joe and a others from some other Alaskan mushers, and Joe had agreed to keep an eye on them till the race was over. The new dogs were a little too old to race again, but would play a part in their ongoing upgrades of their dog breeding program.

A quick walkaround of the rig showed that everything was secure. "Well," Josh shrugged. "Guess there's not much left to do but go home."

"Yeah," Tiffany sighed as she climbed back into the right seat of the pickup. "I guess I know how Cinderella felt when the coach turned back into a pumpkin."

Josh nodded. Five years before -- he'd only been a year out of high school, and Tiffany was still only 13 -- they'd made the decision that they wanted to develop dog teams capable of running the Iditarod. Two years before, they'd made the definite decision to attempt it this year, the first year that Tiffany would be old enough to be eligible. Over the years they had developed the strongest teams on the local sled dog racing circuit, but they had suspected that they didn't measure up to the Alaskan teams. Though their twenty-second and twenty-third finishing places were out of the money, although Josh had won a special prize, but they were respectable finishes for rookies from the lower 48. Josh had driven this rig by himself up to Alaska from Spearfish Lake right after New Years, and had stayed in the camper for weeks to try and condition both teams for Alaskan conditions. Tiffany had taken time off from her high school classes five weeks before to help with the final preparations and run the race. Those last five weeks had been the most intense of what had been rather intense young lives, at least the last few years, preparing for the grueling race, running it, and considerable aftermath.

"Yeah, I guess I do, too," Josh agreed, a little exhaustion seeping through his voice as he climbed back into the pickup and got it moving. He felt totally drained, and suspected Tiffany did too. But there was nearly four thousand miles to drive home down the Alaska Highway and halfway across Canada, mostly on slow two lane roads. With both of them to drive and care for and exercise the dogs, they hoped to do a little better than the ten days it had taken Josh to make the trip solo. Tiffany was supposed to have flown home, but had decided to stay with Josh and help with the trip. "But, I'm glad you're coming with me," he added, glancing over at the diamond ring on her left hand.

Tiffany had been just a little girl, only ten years old, when she and Josh had got involved in dogsled racing, along with her father and Josh's brother-in-law. For the last five years they'd pretty much lived in each other's pockets, working with dogs and going to races, pushing each other to improve their skills. Both had suspected for years that eventually their relationship would get even closer once she got out of high school, although neither had said anything about it until the Musher's Banquet in Nome a couple days before. Josh suspected that it wouldn't surprise anyone at home, either. He'd spent a good chunk of his prize winnings on that ring, and thought that it looked pretty good along with the Iditarod finishers belt buckles they both wore.

"We'll have plenty of time for a critique," Tiffany said, perhaps not noticing Josh's glance.

One of the things that had gotten them to the Iditarod in the first place was that they worked hard to learn from their experiences. They ruthlessly critiqued every race, almost every training session, trying to see ways to improve. Over time, they had learned to be very honest with themselves and each other. Sometimes it didn't take -- they'd had some difficulty learning to accept that criticism. There had been a lot happen in the last few weeks, few days, and they really hadn't had time to pick at it. Both knew that the next few days were going to be an advanced dogsledding seminar, and they were both looking forward to it. It would have been harder to do if she had flown home.

"Yeah," Josh agreed, signaling for a turn. "We're not going to lack for things to talk about. In fact, we ought to make a list of what we need to talk about, just so we don't miss anything."

"Makes sense," Tiffany agreed, reaching for a spiral notebook with a pen stuck in the binding. She had sat in the cab of the pickup and made notes from their critiques many times on the way home from dog sled races in the past. Josh tended to see the big picture a little better than she did, she knew, but she tended to be a little more obsessive about detail. Between them, they didn't miss much. "You've obviously thought about this a little," she said. "Where do you want to start?"

"Well, actually, I see two big questions," Josh said. "The big one, of course, is, do we do the Iditarod in the future, next year or whatever? I don't know that we can even answer that one on this trip, maybe not until next fall, maybe not even then. But, we need to talk about it since the decision will obviously affect the other big question."

"Which is?" Tiffany frowned.

"You and me."

"Why is that a question?"

"It's a question because a lot of things are going to change in the next few months," Josh replied. "We've got questions like how soon we're going to get married, or even if we are. After all, just living together and not getting married is an option."

"True, and we wouldn't get much static about it if we did," Tiffany agreed. She didn't explain why. She'd been her mother's bridesmaid after her mother and father had lived together for fifteen years, and Josh had been one of her father's groomsmen...

"But even that begs the question of how soon you move across the road," Josh smiled. "More importantly, we've got financial issues to discuss. Your folks have been picking up a chunk of our expenses, for example. When you graduate, that's going to change. We barely managed to come up with the money for this trip, and blew up quite a bit of savings in the process. But, that leads right back to the other question: are we going to try the Iditarod in the future. If so, how? If not, what do we do? Do we still run dogs, but at a lower level? If so, what level, and how do we finance that?"

"I can't see us not keeping dogs," she replied with a frown.

"Me either," Josh said, thoughtfully. "But, do we do it on the level of Mark and your dad, just keeping a few dogs to go on camping trips, or maybe run a local race or two without being top rank? Or, do we try to be strong on the local level? Or, maybe be competitive on a lower 48 level, so we'd stand a shot in stuff like the Michigan 200 and the Beargrease? Or, come up here again next year, with the idea of at least making a good shot at a top ten finish? For any of those options, how?"

"I can't see us not wanting to run it again," she said. "I mean, we've worked toward it for so long, it's kind of a letdown to have it over with. But we're both going to want to try it again and do better, even if we can't afford to. Let's start out with the assumption that we're going to try to try it again next year, or at least in a future year if we can't manage it next year, for some reason."

"Fair enough," Josh agreed. "That's the toughest proposition in a number of ways. You know, I don't want to sound defeatist, but I really doubt that we're ever gonna win this thing."

"We knew there was no chance this year," Tiffany frowned. "But ever? Well, there's a chance we could."

"There's a chance," Josh conceded. "But it's a long shot. I think we have the capability of a top ten team, maybe even a team that could contend for a win. But luck plays a part, and I can tell you the names of a lot of people that have been in the top ten any number of times, but never have come close to winning this thing, and don't ever stand a chance unless they get lucky the same year that several other people get unlucky all at the same time. The competition is tough. To win this thing, we're going to have to come up with a team that gets all the right breaks."

She nodded. "We're going to have to concentrate on coming up with one team that can go all the way. I mean, the way we did it this year made sense, but not another year."

"Yeah, we did almost exactly what we set out to do," he agreed. "We wanted two teams that were pretty level with each other." He smiled. "I guess we managed that pretty good."

That drew a chuckle from Tiffany. "We did get that pretty close," she agreed. She had been half a dog length behind Josh after a mad race down Nome's Front Street to the finish arch. She flashed him a knowing smile, and went on. "The idea was to get in a competent rookie run, be able to support each other a little if we needed to, and learn something of what we need to know if we want to run this race in the future. That all worked just about like we wanted it to, and if we hadn't made a couple of first timer dumbass mistakes, I think we could have been a couple spots higher, maybe. But if one of us had had all the best dogs, instead of splitting them up, we should have been able to do better than that."

"Couldn't agree more. There were obvious economies of scale for us to bring two teams up here this year," Josh agreed. "But, I don't think we want to do it that way again. I think we should concentrate on getting one team as high in the standings as possible. A lot of the top ranked people do run second teams, but they're the junior varsity, dogs getting experience and evaluated for the future, and we might want to do that some time in the future. Hell, Rick Swenson's ex-wife ran his JV team for him this year. It might mean that one of us winds up in maybe tenth, and the other in, say, fortieth."

"Makes sense," Tiffany agreed. "Who gets the varsity team?"

"I dunno, at this point," Josh said. "It might be pretty obvious as the race draws close, like if one of us has been sick or something. But then, we could change off each year, too. At this point, though, I'd say that you have dibs on the varsity next time."

"What?" Tiffany was surprised. She'd come to the conclusion that they couldn't again run two level quality teams long before, but she'd expected a fight over who got the varsity.

Josh smiled. He knew that Tiffany had expected to have to fight over that decision. He and Tiffany had each other pretty well taped, after all. "Well, first, on account of where you placed, you obviously had the JVs this year," he teased. "So, it's only fair. But, more important, I think it's going to be a little easier to raise money for next year if you're the lead musher. We've had a good ride out of you being the little girl against the world. It's colorful, it makes stories. You had a whole lot more publicity out of this run than I did. We might as well capitalize on it while we have it. We won't have quite the angle on it another year, but, in general, if everything else is equal you're always going to get more publicity. And, publicity is the key to raising money, after all, so for the future, you may be the lead musher, anyway. But the money is the key to everything."

Tiffany nodded. "It's a bummer, but there it is," she said. It hadn't been until Christmas that they had been sure they were even going to have enough money to run this year, when Jenny had given them a large check. And, that wasn't the major share. Most of Josh's income had gone into this year's run, plus a lot of Tiffany's from when she'd worked at the Burger Bummer, as she called it, most of the last two summers. They'd had a few thousand dollars from sponsors, and there had been contributions from others -- her family, Mark and Jackie, and some of the local mushers.

Some of their support had been unexpected; Josh had taken the pickup into the Dodge garage for a brake job a few weeks before leaving, and it had taken longer than expected to get the pickup back. Half a dozen mechanics had, on their own time, just about jacked up the radiator cap and put a new truck underneath it, with the dealer donating parts out of his own pocket. He did bill Josh for a set of brake pads, though, with a big smile on his face ... Josh had been real worried about making this trip at all in his old pickup, which had an odometer reading well over 200,000 miles.

But, they'd cut it close. What with everything, after two years of work, including a thousand dollars in race winnings, the trip home was being financed out of Josh's credit card, and he hoped to limit the motel stays.

"It's the biggest argument toward just cutting back to local level teams," Josh agreed. "I haven't had the time to work out the exact numbers, but it costs us about thirty thousand dollars a year to just pay the direct expenses of the dogs, training them without even racing them, what with food, gear, and whatnot. That doesn't even figure in the cost of the land, the taxes, and so on. And, we should spend more; we cut come corners, compared to other people, and we really don't have enough dogs." They'd had to borrow six of the dogs in the trailer behind them from other Spearfish Lake mushers, just to fill out their teams, but at least they'd been able to borrow dogs that were the average of their own, or better. "On top of that, there are the extra expenses of racing this thing. I haven't got all the figures in yet, but it'll still come close to twenty grand, over and above the maintenance expense of the dogs. There is an economy of scale in running two teams, though. The second team only costs about another five thousand, maybe a little more, since so much stuff has to be done for the first team anyway."

"It makes a good argument for running the second team," Tiffany agreed. "But, you're leading up to something."

Josh looked around. They were well out of Eagle River by now -- it was a town about the size of Spearfish Lake, although located on the edge of Anchorage. It was beautiful countryside, and signs of spring were on the way. They'd see more snow inland on the way home, but by the time they got home most of the local snow would be gone, mud would be everywhere and the rivers would be raging -- and he'd have to be getting back to his real job, a railroad engineer for the local short-line railroad, which all but shut down in the winter, the only reason he'd been able to devote his winters to dogsledding the last few years.

"I guess I am," he agreed finally... "What with everything, in another year I don't see how I can contribute much more than about ten grand from my own income toward the dogs and running this race again. If you work at the Burger Bummer again, maybe you can contribute a few thousand more, but it really won't be much. And, once we're living together, married or not, there's going to be expenses we didn't have before, because your folks were picking them up. So you're working may not actually gain us anything toward the race, and maybe we'll even lose a little ground. But somehow, we've got to come up with about forty thousand to have the dogs and do the race next year. The alternative is to decide not to race next year, sell a lot of dogs, and soon."